Appeals court keeps New York’s gun restrictions in place, including Times Square and subway ban

Audio By Carbonatix

NEW YORK (AP) — No guns for Elmo, Spider-Man or anyone else in New York’s Times Square — and don’t try sneaking them into the subway, either.

That is the decision Friday from a federal appeals court effectively upholding a New York state law that bars firearms in “sensitive” locations, including the tourist mecca known as “the crossroads of the world," the New York City subway system and commuter trains.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court judge’s 2023 ruling that let the state law remain in effect after several gun owners filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of some restrictions. An appeals court ruling last year has allowed other parts of the law to remain in effect.

The plaintiffs, Jason and Brianna Frey and William Sappe, had sought a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of provisions in the law, known as the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, that have allowed authorities to declare Times Square a “Gun Free Zone,” ban open carry and require a special permit to carry guns in New York City.

U.S. District Judge Nelson Stephen Roman rejected that request, leading to the appeal decided Friday.

A three-judge 2nd Circuit panel ruled that the challenged restrictions fall within the country’s "historical tradition of gun regulations and, thus, does not violate the Second Amendment" right to bear arms. The plaintiffs, they concluded, are "unlikely to succeed on the merits" of their arguments.

Banning guns in Times Square, a swath of midtown Manhattan that is often teeming with sightseers and costumed movie and cartoon characters posing for pictures, is similarly consistent with history dating back to medieval England of "prohibiting firearms in quintessentially crowded places,” the judges wrote in a unanimous opinion. The same holds for the subway and the Metro-North commuter rail service, which connects the city with northern suburbs and Connecticut.

“There is perhaps no public place more quintessentially crowded than Times Square,” the judge said, describing the brightly lit, billboard-lined area as “our modern-day, electrified, supersized equivalent of fairs, markets, and town squares of old.”

Despite that, Judges Robert D. Sack, Reena Raggi and Joseph F. Bianco noted that they were not determining “the ultimate constitutionality of the challenged provisions.” They returned the case to Roman’s court for further proceedings.

Sack was appointed to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat; Raggi was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican; and Bianco was appointed by President Donald Trump, a Republican.

“The Second Circuit decision is disappointing, but not unexpected considering its palpable disdain for the Second Amendment,” said Amy Bellantoni, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the law in court, said in a statement: “New Yorkers deserve to feel safe on public transportation and everywhere in our state, and today’s decision affirms that right."

“Common-sense gun laws save lives, keep guns out of sensitive community spaces, and help address the gun violence crisis,” said James, a Democrat. "New York has some of the strongest common-sense gun laws in the nation, and my office will continue to defend them and protect New Yorkers.”

Friday’s decision is the latest court ruling allowing the Concealed Carry Improvement Act to remain in place, and it echoed rulings that have echoed similar restrictions in other places. The New York law was signed in 2022 as the state’s answer to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that some of its previous gun regulations were unconstitutional.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and state lawmakers rewrote the regulations after the high court struck down the state’s longstanding requirement that people demonstrate an unusual threat to their safety to qualify for a license to carry handguns outside the home.

Last year, the 2nd Circuit upheld other parts of the law, including requirements that concealed carry permit applicants demonstrate good moral character, disclose the names of household and family members, submit to an in-person interview, provide character references and undergo 16 hours of training.

In that ruling, the appeals court also upheld provisions banning the concealed carry of firearms in certain sensitive places and allowing private property owners to post signs prohibiting guns on their property.

Federal appeals courts around the country have ruled similarly in other states, including Hawaii and Virginia, and on Sept. 10, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New Jersey’s ban on guns in sensitive places like schools and public gatherings. Those judges also cited a historical tradition of gun regulation, writing that for certain “discrete locations” the presence of guns was "historically regulated as jeopardizing the peace or posing a physical danger to others.”